Arriving in Paris for the city’s September design week (anchored by the fall edition of the Maison&Objet fair), I had not initially realized that my trip was overlapping with another, even more momentous local festivity: Celine Dion’s Paris residency. Especially beloved in France, the Canadian singer took to the stage on September 12 to kick off an eight-month, 26-concert comeback. I finally clued into this fact during a visit to Galeries Lafayette Haussmann, where a pop-up tied to Dion’s concert series had drawn a long lineup of shoppers eager to buy commemorative t-shirts or copies of “Celion Dion – Live à Paris,” featuring a recording of one of her earlier performances in the city back in 1996. Meanwhile, Maison&Objet and its coinciding events presented no shortage of stereo equipment ready to do those records justice. Designers have, apparently, decided that there are already enough chairs in the world, yet far from enough loudspeakers.

Of course, apart from boasting a one-of-a-kind voice, Dion is also a style icon, known for her wholehearted embrace of bold colours, textures and silhouettes — she’ll wear a graffiti-print body suit one moment, then a pink shredded-organza cape the next. In that same spirit, Paris Design Week had plenty of daring furnishings and decor that proved maximalism can be chic, too. “Have you seen Celine?” friends messaged after I posted my first shot of the Eiffel Tower on Instagram. In the end, our paths didn’t cross. But if I ever do run into her, I have plenty of fabulously outrageous furniture to recommend. Here’s a tour through my Paris camera roll.

1

Sonic Wonders

A few weeks back, I profiled Toronto’s TigerBaby — the latest café to demonstrate that, in the world of cool coffee shops, your speakers are quickly becoming just as important as your espresso machine. Where hospitality establishments once went out of their way to hide their A/V setup, now they’re placing one-of-a-kind stereo equipment front and centre — and Paris had definitely gotten the memo.

At one of the several galleries playing host to Paris Design Week’s multi-venue Factory exhibition of emerging talents, an entire mezzanine was devoted to avant-garde loudspeaker designs. The most radical (by Studio Matthijs Koerts) featured paper cones, while another by Eric Treillard was upholstered in plaid tartan fabric and equipped with shopping trolley-style wheels.

Established audio brands were also out in full force at Maison&Objet, where La Boite Concept introduced its handsome Killer 105 walnut speakers, Elipson showed off its spherical Planet in every colour of the rainbow, and Scandinavia’s Transparent debuted Brutalist — a sculptural aluminum “sound monument for the home.”

Need somewhere to stash your vinyl collection? Enter Groovaly, a new brand launching with colourful, space age-inflected modular storage systems.

2

Animal Instincts

The upholstery industry has been flirting with zebra print and other jungle patterns for a minute now, but Paris led the design safari in fantastical new directions.

Building on her experience as a knitwear designer, Nelly Bellegarde showcased a trio of furry lamps that felt like glowing muppets. On display in Paris Design Week’s Factory exhibition, each one was accompanied by a matching furry power cord.

Rotterdam designer Maori Kimura’s shelving unit (another Factory sighting) was even more colourful than a peacock. It struts its stuff in the sustainability department, too — the design repurposes the fringed edges of leftover textile waste. In some of Kimura’s other, one-off pieces, she even uses this fringe technique to cover furniture with aesthetic damage, giving it a second life.

Toronto-based rug maker Creative Matters took a more scientific approach with its Zoometry collection, teaming up with Parisian firm RDAI for a collection of rugs that translate spider webs into patterns with a rich sense of depth.

3

Major Monuments

From the Eiffel Tower to the Arc de Triomphe, Paris has no shortage of historical landmarks. But during the city’s design week, a whole new series of contemporary attractions cropped up.

The first large-scale installation actually commemorated the restoration of the Grand Palais, and its Antin Rotunda. French studio Uchronia translated the space’s floral mosaic floor and decorative moulding into a supersized metal bouquet. Rounding out the romantic composition were a series of round beds produced by Tréca, plus tables and stools by Tiptoe with scalloped edges.

Next up, the courtyard at the Hôtel de Sully tried on a little bling: Irish designer Joseph Walsh’s five-metre-tall wooden ring coated in gold leaf, Magnus. The sculpture served as a preview for the designer’s equally sinuous series of tables, chairs and cabinets, on display inside the hotel.

Pierre Renart’s wooden Arabesque, stationed in the courtyard of the Hôtel de Rohan, was another installation with sinuous flair. In this case, it doubled as street furniture — as the wooden sculpture touches down, it forms a pair of benches.

4

Free-Spirited Funhouse

Parisian style is often defined by restraint and understated elegance — but where’s the fun in that? Many of this year’s standout displays adopted a welcome sense of playfulness.

Serving as this fall’s Maison&Objet ambassadors, Spain’s Masquespacio contributed a feature installation — Feel the Shift — that reflected both the studio’s transformation and the ongoing evolution of the home. Along with maintaining the firm’s usual emphasis on unexpected colour and pattern combinations, there was a strong focus on artisanal craftsmanship seen in carved wooden screens, ceramic floor lamps and sconces, and chairs with ruffled fabric skirts. Masquespacio described the environment as “a space shaped around comfort, connection and small sensory moments that can awaken an emotion, or simply make someone smile.”

Back in AZURE‘s old office, I bumped into people on a near-daily basis while rounding the corner on the way out of the kitchen. So, at Maison&Objet’s Future on Stage section, I was immediately drawn to Risette’s corner mirrors, which allow an easy view of what’s coming around the bend. Led by César Moncaut (a Design Academy Eindhoven grad), the Dutch studio places particular focus on corner objects. Another design is a book-like cardboard lamp — again, designed specifically for corners — that allows people to flip over its magnetic pages to change its appearance.

In the Cook & Share section of the fair, textile artist Sarah Espeute (who leads Oeuvres Sensibles) set a table with a custom tablecloth embroidered with decorative plates and hand silhouettes.

DEFT Studios, led by architects-turned-designers Martin Tallie and Zani Alberts, was another design practice with a free-wheeling approach to geometric patterns. Their work was part of Maison&Objet’s Rising Talent section, which this year focused on studios from South Africa.

Nouveau Souffle was another of the fair’s special attractions. Curated by art director Pauline Glaizal, the pavilion collected objets from throughout the show floor and grouped them into themed sections that set out to spotlight what’s next in retail. For instance, “Néo-50s” focused on offbeat updates on the mid-century modern aesthetic that defined post-war domesticity. The entire exhibition was coated in an arresting pinkish-purple hue, and each display floated atop a garden bed of dried florals.

5

Material Experiments

In Materia was another Maison&Objet feature display that grouped a range of designs from the show floor into a gallery-style environment. In this case, artistic director Elizabeth Leriche sought out craft objects created in workshops — drawing attention to the way that a maker leaves their own imprint on handmade wood, metal, ceramic and glass designs.

Back in the fair’s Future on Stage section, Baguette Studio demonstrated the capabilities of vegetable wax and beeswax — biodegradable materials that they melt and pour into rotational moulds to form their range of lighting.

The final studio recognized in the Future on Stage section, RAW-Edges showcased its light-as-air LightMass family of sculptural shades, 3-D printed as flat sheets using biopolymers, then folded into three-dimensional forms and stitched closed.

Simphiwe Mlambo, another exhibitor from Maison&Objet’s Rising Talents showcase of the South African design scene, paid tribute to his grandmother’s grass mats, reimagined here as a wall screen and a bench wrapped in colourful cords to resemble her loom.

6

Cultural Residencies

Beyond the fair, Paris Design Week programming did an especially great job of placing today’s designers in conversation with institutions spotlighting the city’s design history.

Hanjimani at the Hôtel de la Marine was a cross-cultural affair, recognizing the 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between France and Korea. French designers, including Pierre Yovanovitch and Constance Guisset, worked with Korean artisans to produce lamps, screens and sculptures that all made creative use of hanji — a paper made from the inner bark of mulberry trees that UNESCO is currently considering for inclusion on its list of objects with Intangible Cultural Heritage. All of this played out in the French heritage museum, providing a 21st-century contrast to the 18th-century furniture and art that otherwise fill the venue’s opulent, historical rooms.

Up next was the Musée Bourdelle, which showcases historic bronzes by sculptor Antoine Bourdelle across three interconnected buildings that once served as the artist’s workshops. For Design Week, the museum had introduced a new layer of work into the spaces, displaying work by designer Anthony Guerrée. Wood and stained glass screens joined Bourdelle’s sculptures in the museum’s plaster hall, while the sculpture studio played host to a series of ceramic vessels.

8

Existential Experiments

Christopher Dessus, founder of Parisian design studio Paf Atelier, followed up last year’s wonderfully zany Design Disco Club exhibition with an even more radical exhibition, Tous Est Chaos.

Immediately upon entering, a simple wooden vase emblazoned with the message “F*ck Milan” set the tone for a show that set out to create “meaning in an era of information overload.”

Yellow posters displaying a series of reflections on the state of the modern design industry followed. “Today, designers are asked to think in terms of sustainability, profitability and responsibility,” began one. “To design better and more while producing less, to offer something new and beautiful while remaining true to tradition. Modern schizophrenia, contemporary disenchantment.” Frankenstein furniture like Pierre Simon’s side table that mixed antique turned wooden legs with sleek steel surfaces and Grégory Lacoua’s coat rack (featuring tennis balls as hooks) took this messaging to heart.

Even the show’s more sensible-looking designs still tackled its themes head-on. Samy Rio’s terracotta table lamps — displayed in an initial edition of 30 — resulted from the designer’s attempt to leverage local, specialized craft production, all while still producing something that can still be sold at an accessible price point. How did he manage that? By enlisting a company — Terre Cuite de Bourgogne — that typically produces roof ridge tiles.

My favourite piece in the exhibition was a cabinet by Gaspard Fleury Dugy featuring a knitted back that builds upon the 3-D-knitted vessels he’d shown in Paris Design Week Factory last year. The future may be chaotic, but for this designer, it’s looking bright, too.

9

Something for Everyone

Even Monoprix — the grocery store-meets-home goods retailer — was getting in on the Paris Design Week action, debuting a capsule collection developed with local collective Hall Haus (which also served as the curator of Maison&Objet’s Design District section). Featuring a chair, lunch kit, toaster and clock (many of them retailing for less than €100) that all adopted Hall Haus’s signature punched hole aesthetic, the collection seemed to have been a massive hit — I went into six different Monoprix locations, and only one still had a few of the products left. I only got to see the chair because of a special display promoting the collaboration in the gift shop of the Grand Palais. Given how much of Milan Design Week felt focused on the hyper-luxury market, this collection’s broad accessibility felt particularly refreshing.

10

What Comes Next?

Every design week moves through the same frantic cycle: The industry arrives, observes, celebrates a few key standouts, and then moves onto the next one. Of course, there’s far more to a city’s design industry than can be captured in a single week (or in my case, three days). Think of all the exciting projects that aren’t quite ready for the spotlight in time for September.

With that in mind, Maison Kyka — a studio specializing in home renovations — staged one of its works-in-progress as a design destination in its own right. On the second floor, what will eventually be a dining room featured an all-white banquet table surrounded by drywall debris.

One floor up, a future living room was filled with furniture still waiting to be unwrapped — a playful reflection of the fact that sometimes, the intrigue and anticipation of what might await eclipse the actual end result. (Though based on Maison Kyka’s portfolio, in this case we’re sure the finished product will be plenty pretty, too.)

For my final stop, I headed to the Musée Chasse Nature (the Museum of Hunting and Nature), where Harry Nuriev (named Maison&Objet’s 2026 Designer of the Year) grappled with what might become of all the products launched at this year’s fairs at some point down the road. Electronics and home goods that looked too retro to be new — but not old enough to warrant inclusion in a museum — were laid out on a steel podium to create a giant cabinet of familiar curiosities. As someone always hunting for the next new thing, the installation was a good reminder that, as pretty as that ladder I saw at Maison&Objet was, the ladder I already own is just fine, too. Time to cue up Celine’s “It’s All Coming Back To Me, Now.“